Reading and Repairing the Flood Damaged Land

This paper looks at how farmers in Chak No. 192-RB read and repair their land after floods. The village is on the Rakh Branch of the Lower Chenab Canal in Faisalabad District, Punjab. The study draws on a survey of ten farming households and six weeks of fieldwork in June and July 2026. Farmers there sort flood residue into four types: bhal (fine silt), gaad (heavy, sticky sediment), ret (coarse sand) and kallar (salt crust). Each type tells them what treatment the field needs, how soon, and at what cost. Their treatments match published agronomy on gypsum and Sesbania green manure. Even so, four of ten fields took longer than three months to recover, and one never has. The paper argues that farmers are held back by a lack of means, not a lack of knowledge. They know what their land needs but cannot afford the inputs, machinery and drainage to provide it. This gap sits at the mogha, the canal outlet. Above it the state controls the water; below it, maintenance and drainage fall to the village. Communal labour that once filled the gap is weakening as young men leave for city work. Recovery policy built around teaching farmers, the paper concludes, is solving the wrong problem.